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Understudy
You imagining every Craigslist missed connection
as something you wrote,
reaching out to find a future (not past)
version of yourself.
Spelling mistakes,
weird syntax,
English a second language,
all glued to the tips of your sweaty fingers
reaching out from a hole
without a visible bottom.
If you could get pregnant
you probably would never stop.
You would never stop getting pregnant.
No one would ask you about the father
and you would wear robes all the time.
You imagine something so tall
you can’t see its top.
You imagine the horizon encircling you
and crawling towards you forever.
“Things are getting better as they become more unbearable,”
you imagine a therapist you could never afford
telling you with a soft voice.
She is pretty and smells clean,
and you try not to imagine her naked
but you can’t help it.
Birds and a Basketball Court
I could kick any size group of birds’ asses.
There is no limit to the number of birds
I could totally demolish.
I am thinking this while walking on damp pavement,
the air heavy with moisture,
able to smell my own armpits with ease.
Then I imagine me lying in the fetal position
on a wet, outdoor basketball court,
the carnage of getting my ass kicked,
already having happened.
A hyena approaches slowly
and eats my dumb guts first.
Out to See
Take me to a crowded Mexican restaurant
to simultaneously
restore my lust for life
and give me a panic attack.
My boss asked me why I couldn’t visualize
something that does not exist.
He didn’t give me a chance to answer.
He told me it’s because I haven’t made it yet.
Who knows what my teeth are doing
while my mouth is closed.
If there were music
composed in the same frequency as human speech
you wouldn’t know if it were playing around you
all the time.
My Dad, the Idiot
I’m a sucker for people.
I accidentally wrote “people” as “me”
in the first draft.
It is not a coincidence that the word “draft”
denotes a hierarchy of editing
and imperfections in the seals of a home.
Or maybe it is; I’m pretty dumb.
Watching someone else waste time is not a waste of my time.
When I lip-sync lyrics,
it’s really for everyone else’s benefit.
And I’ll sometimes think about the notebooks from high school
that I filled with overheard non sequiturs
and in hindsight attempted to string along
into a coherent necklace.
One phrase from my stoned dad
has never lost its flavor—
“you are bound by nothing.”
What an idiot.
Draft
Save me as a draft.
Written up.
Ruminated upon.
Finger hovering over the send button.
Structure adjusted.
Then re-adjusted.
The reaction imagined.
Progressively lower
in the sediment of your inbox.
Then refreshed to the top
by the magma of your re-reading.
Jacob Anderson is a graphic designer and artist from Virginia. His first word was “planetarium” and his world-famous mac ‘n cheese will block you up for days. His website is here.